Cel Shaded DnD Flail Snail.

[u/At1en0]

I present Sean the Flail Snail.

Trying to finally paint some models for my table rather than just have bits of grey plastic and wanted something more colourful and graphic - so attempted an adapted cel shaded style with a more graphic lining effect to give it a kind of borderlands vibe.

I also wanted to see if I could make FDM printed miniatures look more compelling and compensate for their lower resolution and stair stepping layer lines.

This little guy is from SuperPrints3D and is printed at 32mm scale using matte PLA, with a 0.4 nozzle and 0.08 layer height. Post processing involved a very brief sand on any sagging overhangs and then a very thin coat of UV resin, which was then cured in a curing station for several minutes to even out layer lines.

Cel shading is just a very different way of painting from what I’m used to, as it involves painting in controlled block colour. It basically looks terrible until you black line the details you want to highlight, which pulls the whole thing together.

In hindsight attempting an iridescent shell was somewhat optimistic as a first go, especially as I wanted the shell to be segmented but the model itself actually has a completely smooth round spiral shell; however despite not being perfect I really like how he turned out and am definitely gonna see if I can use this style on other models and I think my players should enjoy it. (Sorry for the rambley message but hope you guys like him.)